Monday, December 17, 2007

As the Art World Turns IV

What does it mean to be creative?

Is it a posthuman condition?

Or is it aboriginary with cyborgian implications?

Remixology samples from Whitehead when he says"Creativity is the principle of novelty"a conditioned indetermination that morphs into a real potentialityspurring on the further advance of our ongoing creative momentumvia an applied aesthetics that both manipulates and is unquestionably manipulated bythe environment that each novel situation presents to us in its state of immediacy

This "advance" garde of Creativity itselfin pursuit of transmuting aesthetic moments creates a physical momentumformally felt as an ongoing satisfactionwithin an optimum economy of motionand is triggered by the intensity of experiencewhich in itself becomes an aesthetic factand informs "the production of novel togetherness"

The "production of novel togetherness"(as Whitehead refers to it)is the ultimate notion embodied in the term concrescence (where the manybecome one and are increased by one)

An artist role-playing a mathematicianwho aligns his avant-garde practicewith the entrepreneurial spirit of an academiclooking to hurdle impenetrable institutionsin a series of single bounds (still binding)might formulate it as such:

M = ManyOne = Fluid Singularity1 = Remix-in-process

and conclude

M = One + 1 (always becoming)

The casual dropping of the parenthetical"always becoming" signals a break away from what others might call "total togetherness"and instead highlights how Whitehead's"production of novel togetherness"advancing into the future of nowis really what it means for artist-mediumsto live in perpetual postproduction(a non-totalizing experience)

Always becoming a postproduction mediumis what it means to be aesthetically networked(to tweak synaptic knobs while spinning)(to customize artist-apparatus filtersas part of an hallucinatory achievement)(to embody creative synthesis in praxiswhile intersubjectively jamming with the autopoieticenvironment I call the artificial intelligentsia)

In META/DATA I suggest that we are all bornavant-garde (that it is our natural birthright)but that one of the cruel ironies of being a living breathing postproduction mediumin an age of super-late turbocharged capitalismis that the environment that produces innovationis now also the environment that kills creativity

This sets up an epic struggle for artist-mediums whose ongoing satisfaction of formally felt experience is co-dependent on their being able to intuitivelygenerate emergent forms of novelty ("Creativity itself")

In his "Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism"Steve Odin says "creativity is tenable only in an asymmetrical framework of causal relatedness"and highlights Whitehead's use of the term vectoras a way to signify a magnitude with direction

For the contemporary remixologistthis relaying or relayering of experiencetranslates as an intensive "always becoming"or always live postproduction performancethat turns the trajectory of the artist-mediuminto a simultaneous and continuousfusion of light motion energy sensation effect affect emotion ["an aesthetic fact"]i.e. a picture-perfect model of aesthetic fitness

What's interesting from the perspective of onewho regularly contradicts himself and knowsfor a fact that being a picture-perfect modelis not a matter of "do as I say" or"do as I do" but rather a matter of remixologically inhabiting the datum that pings your unconscious neural mechanismand spurs you on to create your own versionof this ongoing "narrative in the making"

is that regardless of whether you may or may not be readily inclinedto render into vision [to literally envision]a nuanced mix of what it means to circulatewithin the networked space of flows

the Many that is "always becoming"+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1and that advances toward the ultimate dream of picture-perfect connectednessis forever charging and recharging"language to the utmost possible degree"and intervening in concrescent processesother than its own

This process of Collective Envisioningthat feeds the Creative Advancein superlate turbocharged technocapitalist culturemore than suggests thatThe Aesthetic Turn is now upon us

It has become us and we it

The pragmatist in me then wants to ask"How much will it cost us?"and as a follow-up"How can we translate our creativityinto 'digicash' currency that willenable us to afford being the postproduction mediums we long to become?"

Perhaps Remixology can help guide usin that it shows the contemporary artist-mediumwhere to focus their attention whileperforming this always livepostproduction process that renders theminto a simultaneous and continuous fusion of light motion energy sensation effect affect emotion

For if Remixology is anything at allit is an ongoing valuation of onesLife Style Practice as an aesthetic factone that integrates selectively manipulated datainto its pattern of intensivenessa pattern that is aesthetically perceived asthe novel production of togethernessin its phase of (nonstop) origination

(think of it as an eternally remixable originarythat comes with endless feedsof open source material)

The question remixologists constantly facewhile performing their "live postproduction sets"as a pattern of intensive aesthetic experiencesis "How then to keep the Big Creative Mowithin an optimum economy of motion?"

(The literary precursors for these kindsof methodologies would be Oulipo i.e."Ouvroir de littérature potentielle" or"The Workshop of Potential Literature"Brion Gysin and William Burroughs practice/theory of The Third Mindor even my own recent 29 Incheswhere I take my incoming spam messagesand force myself to remixologicallly inhabit themas my "source material" for that day)

Or take the basic ideas of "thematic context"and/or "methods for an applied aesthetics"and develop a hactivist remix strategythat creates an intimate relationshipwith the source material close at hand

For the last two years I have located a worda single word that was to be the driving forcefor all (post)production the ensuing year(not as a limit but as a triggering devicethat I could always turn to when in need)

Simple things like this have a wayof keeping one focused and as alwaysmay lead to unexpected outcomesas you begin to see thingsyou never knew were there but werealways right in front of you

(not seeing what is right in front of youhas been thought of as a negative hallucination)

The notion of "intuition" has beenvery very good to me in 2007I have seen it everywhereeven though it is not necessarily somethingthat you can literally seemaybe it would be better to sayI have felt it form inside of meand have become intimate with the rhythmof its patterned projections as I act on whatever ground is available to me at any given time

I have watched it [intuition] change shapeover the course of 12 monthsa kind of embodied yet amorphous shape-shifting vector (magnitude with direction)that has metamediumistically stimulated meto continually perform my processual relayerings of throbbing intensities as they shiftbetween occasions of aesthetic experienceforming a pattern of energetic transmissions between all of the vibratory events I have mutated myself through asa just-in-time postproduction medium(the creative advance of novelty embodied)and so it seems only right that as 2007inevitably draws to a closeand I have ended the year on my Whitehead kickthat I would now turn to Whitehead who writes

Thus the 'production of novel togetherness' is the ultimate notion embodied in the term concrescence. These ultimate notions of 'production of novelty' and 'concrete togetherness' are inexplicable either in terms of higher universals or in terms of the components participating in the concrescence. The analysis of the components abstracts from the concrescence. The sole appeal is to intuition.